Prepared for hell —

2 million turned out for Diablo III open beta

Plus 10 million sign-ups for Call of Duty Elite

In a call discussing Activision Blizzard's recent quarterly earnings, Activision Publishing president Mike Morhaime announced that over 2 million players took part in Diablo III's "stress test" open beta last month.

The company previously revealed that the servers peaked at 300,000 simultaneous users in the weekend test, during which many players saw periodic problems logging in. In a recent pre-launch FAQ for the game, the company warned that players may see login delays of up to 40 seconds during the game's May 15 launch, as it adjusts the login rate to maintain stability.

Activision Blizzard also revealed some mind-boggling statistics for the record-breaking Call of Duty franchise. Over 10 million people are now signed up for its premium Call of Duty Elite service (up 40 percent since the end of January), including 2 million annual members (up 33 percent since January). Those players have logged over 1.6 billion hours playing Modern Warfare 3, and the franchise as a whole currently sees 40 million active players each month.

Other stats from Activision Blizzard's earnings call:

Skylander: Spyro's Adventure has now sold over 30 million toys over its lifetime.

World of Warcraft has stabilized at 10.2 million subscribers, equal to the number reported last quarter but down from 11 million reported a year ago.

1.2 million players have signed up for a World of Warcraft annual pass and taken part in the Mists of Pandaria beta.

The company recorded $1.17 billion in revenues, down from $1.45 billion from the year before, but beating the expectations of both analysts and the company itself.

Kyle Orland
Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area. Emailkyle.orland@arstechnica.com//Twitter@KyleOrl